You'll have to admit that XML is a very good exchange standard: it allows you to specify the encoding of information, it get rid of line ending problems, it is reasonably sef-documented and quite human legible. If all else fails you can always fire up vi and figure out what's in the file you just received.

I quite agree. I'm no standards expert, but I think one of the clearest benefits of XML lies in a field wider than just code. With more and more dynamic community-based sites popping up by the day, and you average Joe wanting to make the stuff he writes on them look cool, the general public is becoming much more familiar with HTML. And, "XML looks just like HTML".

The angle brackets of HTML looked very odd to me when I first saw them, and I'm sure they still do to anyone new to that stuff. But as the new generation takes up computers, HTML will begin to be understood by people, and I think eventually XML or a derivative of it will become the language for all code-related human-maintained files. By this, I mean that configuration files for your Perl programs will probably be written in XML, as that way everyone will understand them. None of all this silly var: value syntax that has to be relearned for every program that works slightly differently. Feel free to disagree, but I think that's a good thing. (/me shudders when he thinks of Esperanto, and hopes the same doesn't apply here...)

I speak not as a devotee of XML; I'm still deciding on my module of choice, my familiarity with XML::Parser amounts to a brief look over the tutorial here, and reading the standard gave me a brain-ache. I certainly don't force people into using it. But I am excited about getting an oppurtunity to use it. I admit, tilly, that none have come up yet, but if/when one does I'll jump at the chance.